The Beatryce Prophecy

by Kate DiCamillo

  Cannoc said, “Brother Edik had been detained by one of the robbers of the woods. I came upon him just in time, and we soon sorted everything out. Nothing is more terrifying to evil than joy.”

  “Brother Edik,” said Beatryce. She pulled away from him. She took hold of his hand. She looked into his eyes—the one that was solemn and waiting, the other dancing and rolling in his head. “Much has happened. I have remembered. I know who I am.”

  She took a deep breath. She did not take her eyes from his.

  “I am Beatryce of Abelard, and the king has ordered me killed. He killed my brothers and my tutor. I do not know where my mother is, or even if she lives.”

  Brother Edik squeezed her hand, and she drew herself up very straight. “I intend to stand face-to-face with the king. I will have him tell me where my mother is. I will call him to account.”

  Jack Dory cleared his throat. “But first,” he said, “before she goes, Beatryce has agreed to teach me to read and write.”

  Brother Edik said, “Oh, Beatryce.”

  “I am teaching him even now,” she said.

  Brother Edik nodded. He said, “There is a prophecy that is written in the Chronicles of Sorrowing.” He spoke very slowly, very carefully. “And this prophecy says that there will one day come a girl child who will unseat a king and bring about a great change.”

  Beatryce felt the wind from her dream—cold, powerful—blow through her.

  “Much has happened,” said Cannoc. “Much has yet to happen. We will sit together. We will discuss it.”

  And so they sat, the four of them.

  Five, if you counted the goat.

  And who would not count the goat?

  Beatryce rested her hand on Answelica’s head; with the other hand, she kept hold of Brother Edik.

  They sat in the hollow of the great tree.

  They sat gathered around the flame of a candle, and the flame threw their shadows up behind them. There were moments when their shadows looked bigger, much bigger than they themselves were. And then, too, sometimes their shadows seemed to shrink. Big, small, big, small—their five shadows moved against the trunk of the tree.

  Beatryce told Brother Edik all of what she remembered—her brothers and the tutor and the soldier and the seahorse falling to the ground.

  “How, then, did you find your way to the monastery?” asked Brother Edik.

  She shook her head. “I cannot say. I do not remember.”

  Brother Edik turned to Jack Dory. He said, “And you, Jack Dory, are being tutored by Beatryce.”

  “Aye,” said Jack Dory. “When she does not fall asleep, I am tutored.” He smiled. And then he could not help it; he said aloud the letters of the alphabet, one after the other, in the order that Beatryce had told him. He remembered them exactly.

  “He knew nothing, Brother Edik,” said Beatryce. “The people do not know how to read or write.”

  “And what of this prophecy?” said Cannoc. “Shall we now speak of that?”

  The shadows on the wall danced.

  “Is it about Beatryce? The prophecy?” said Jack Dory. “Does it mean she will rule the land?”

  “I don’t believe there has ever been a queen,” said Brother Edik.

  “Perhaps it is time,” said Cannoc. “After so many kings.”

  Beatryce sat with her hand on Answelica’s head. She looked impossibly small and also bald—not at all like someone who would unseat a king.

  “I do not want to be a queen,” said Beatryce. “I want only to find my mother and to look the king in the eye and hear him say what he has done.”

  Beside Beatryce, Answelica held her head high. Her strange eyes glowed.

  “Does this prophecy mention a goat?” said Jack Dory.

  “It does not mention a goat,” said Brother Edik.

  “How can it be a true and accurate prophecy without mentioning the goat?” said Jack Dory.

  Cannoc laughed and Brother Edik smiled.

  But Beatryce looked at them and said, “The prophecy confirms it. I must go to the king.”

  Her jaw was knotted. There was a look on her face that Jack Dory had learned to recognize and be wary of.

  “Some in the world are certain to have their own way,” said Jack Dory under his breath. That is what Granny Bibspeak would have said, had she been there.

  “What is that?” said Beatryce. “What did you say?”

  “Naught,” said Jack Dory.

  She glared at him; the goat, of course, glared at him, too. It was terrible and overwhelming to have both their ferocious looks trained upon him at the same time.

  “It is only that you promised to teach me to read,” said Jack Dory.

  “And also,” said Brother Edik, “you promised me the story of my mermaid.”

  “Yes,” she said. “It is true. I did promise. I promised both of those things.”

  It was late at night. They were all asleep in Cannoc’s tree.

  But Beatryce could not sleep. She could not keep herself from sorting through what she knew and did not know, what she had dreamed and what she remembered.

  For instance: she had not told the others that she remembered standing up.

  Once it was silent, once the only sound in the world was the beating of her own heart, she had stood up and walked away from her brothers and the tutor.

  Who would want to admit to such a thing—to walking away from people you loved?

  But she had done it. She had stood up and walked away.

  Nor did she tell them what she had dreamed—the cliff and the sea and her hair long, and the wind in her face and Answelica beside her and Jack Dory coming toward her—a dream of the future, she was sure of it.

  If the prophecy was about her, she must face it.

  She did not want to be queen, but still she had to go to the king.

  She had to find her mother.

  And yet she had promised Brother Edik that she would write the story of his mermaid.

  And there was Jack Dory to consider—his face open, alight, as she told him each of the letters and how they could be combined to name the world.

  She had promised him, too.

  She put out her hand and touched Answelica’s bony, warm head.

  The goat’s eyes opened and looked into hers. Planets. Other worlds.

  Beatryce remembered again standing in the morning darkness with the tutor, holding the magic glass and staring up at the glowing planet.

  “Do you think that the people on this other world are standing and looking through a magic glass at us?” she said to the tutor. “Could it be that they are wondering about us even as we are wondering about them?”

  The tutor put a hand on her shoulder.

  “Beatryce,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Your father was a great friend of mine. He believed very much in knowledge and learning.”

  She did not look away from the planet. She kept the glass pointing at the sky. She could feel her hand tremble. “I did not know him,” she said. “He died and I have no memory of him.”

  “He wanted you to know as much as could be known,” said the tutor. “It is your birthright. That is what he believed.”

  “I want to learn.”

  “I will teach you everything I can, everything I am able, so that if a different day comes, you will be ready.”

  But he hadn’t taught her everything he could.

  He had been killed before he could do that.

  The king had ordered him killed.

  And the day had come, hadn’t it? The different day had come.

  She must be ready now.

  There was, in truth, no time to waste.

  She could not keep the promises she had made. At least she could not keep them now.

  She stood and, in the darkness of Cannoc’s tree, the goat stood, too.

  “Shhh,” said Beatryce. “Come.”

  Together, she and the goat stepped around the sleeping forms of Cannoc and Brother Edik and
Jack Dory. They went through the small door into the great darkness outside.

  Beatryce stood for a moment and looked up. She saw the stars, hundreds of them, thousands of them, and she thought she saw a planet—surely, there was a planet up there, too—looking down at her.

  And then, without warning, the stars disappeared, and the world became nothing but darkness. There was an overwhelming smell of mold and blood.

  “Don’t make a sound,” said a voice. She was pulled tighter into the darkness.

  Did she call out?

  She did not.

  She knew what had happened.

  She knew who had come for her.

  The goat stood over Jack Dory.

  Her breath was hot on his face.

  She said nothing. She was capable of saying nothing.

  She was only a goat.

  But he woke to her bright eyes staring at him, and it was as good as if she had spoken.

  “Now is the time for that sword, you.”

  Jack Dory reached for the sword. He wrapped his hand around the hilt and leapt to his feet.

  He stood, breathing hard, holding the sword in front of him. He looked around in the darkness. Brother Edik. Cannoc. Answelica.

  But there was no Beatryce. His heart was beating fast, slamming against the walls of his chest.

  “Beatryce!” he shouted.

  The goat butted her head against his legs, pushing him forward.

  He bent and went through the door and out into the world, where the stars were shining magnificently, indifferently.

  “Beatryce!” Jack Dory shouted again.

  He heard rustling, the sound of branches breaking.

  The goat butted her head into his right leg. She looked up at him with desperate eyes. Answelica knew what had happened, but she could not say it.

  Brother Edik came out of the door in the tree. Behind him was Cannoc.

  The two men were nothing but shadows in the darkness under the bright stars. They were all nothing but shadows.

  “She’s gone,” said Jack Dory. He thought he might cry. The sword felt cold in his hands, worthless.

  Cannoc put his hand on Jack Dory’s shoulder.

  “We will find her,” he said.

  “We three will go and find her,” said Brother Edik.

  Answelica made a small strangled noise.

  “We four,” said Cannoc. “We four will find her.”

  Jack Dory stood holding the sword. It was a heavy thing. His heart was heavy, too. It was, he reckoned, a heart full of too many things. It carried the letters of the alphabet, waiting to be fashioned into words. It carried Granny Bibspeak, and his parents, and Beatryce.

  How much could a heart hold?

  The bee buzzed above his head.

  He looked down at Answelica. Her eyes spoke to him. They said, “Now. Hurry. There is no time to waste. We must go to the castle of the king.”

  The goat.

  The goat was in his heart, too. Seemingly, the heart could hold an untold amount of things—letters and people and goats and bees.

  Seemingly, there was no limit to what it could contain.

  Jack Dory lifted the sword.

  The blade of it gleamed in the light of the indifferent stars.

  “We must go now,” Jack Dory said to the others.

  And then he repeated what the goat had told him, what he knew to be true: “There is no time to waste. We must go to the castle of the king.”

  She was on the back of a horse, wrapped tightly in a scratchy and terrible-smelling cloth—a blanket or cloak.

  Whoever had captured her did not talk. There was breathing. The sound of a horse’s hooves. The clink of spurs. But there were no words, and Beatryce thought that this was the fourth darkness.

  The first darkness had been when she lay beneath her brothers’ bodies.

  The second darkness was when she found her way to the monastery and woke in the barn, holding Answelica’s ear, remembering nothing that had come before.

  The third darkness was when she sat on the floor of the room at the inn and heard the confession of the soldier.

  Each time, she had found her way out into the light—with the help of a goat, a monk, a boy.

  But this time? What of this time?

  In his bag of wonders, the tutor had a book. The pages of it were glossy and slick, and they were sewn together in a complicated and elegant way, so that the stitches did not show at all. The words in the book were printed uniformly, evenly, and each page was filled with lavish illustrations.

  The book told the story of a wolf who was, in truth, a king.

  The king had been cursed by a witch and turned into a wolf, and he went through the world with the crown upon his head, buried beneath his thick wolf fur. No one could see the crown; thus, no one believed that he was the king.

  In the book, there was a picture of the night sky, blue unto black, and in the sky, there was a moon on its side, looking down at the wolf with sadness and wonder.

  The moon, alone, knew who the wolf truly was.

  Until a small girl came along.

  The girl could see the glint of the crown beneath the fur.

  She said to the wolf, “I see your crown.”

  And with these words, the wolf partially transformed before her. He became, then, half king and half wolf.

  The more the girl believed in the king in him, the more the king appeared.

  But if she stopped believing, the king would disappear, and there was nothing then but wolf—sharp-clawed and long-toothed—enraged at not being seen for who he truly was.

  The girl said to him, “I am tired of believing you into existence. It is too much work. You must believe for yourself that you are king.”

  The girl went away after she spoke these words, and the wolf sat alone under the blue-black sky with the moon looking down on him—studying him, pitying him.

  But slowly, slowly, the wolf believed himself into the king he was. He transformed the whole of himself with the exception of his left paw. That—the paw—he could not seem to undo, to make human again. The magic that the witch had put in place there could not be unwoven. But as for the rest of him: he was king and not wolf, and that is how he stayed.

  After a long time, the girl returned to him. She was a grown woman, and she said to him, “You believed for yourself who you are.”

  The king replied, “I did.”

  And they were then king and queen together. They ruled side by side.

  It was only they two who knew that one of the king’s hands was, in truth, the paw of something wild.

  They knew and the moon knew.

  And the reader of the story knew, too.

  The book ended with words spoken by the wise queen. Those words were: “We shall all, in the end, be led to where we belong. We shall all, in the end, find our way home.”

  On the back of the horse, wrapped in the foul cloth, Beatryce remembered the words at the end of the book, remembered, too, writing them down before the monks at the monastery.

  Even when she had been able to recall nothing at all about who she was, she had remembered the words of this story.

  Why?

  Perhaps because she had loved the book so much—the feel of its pages in her hand, its deep-hued illustrations, its uniformly printed words.

  When she was done reading the book, Beatryce had told the tutor that she wanted another one like it—another book that was full of transformations and discoveries, wolves and moons, curses and becomings.

  The tutor had said, “There are no other books that tell stories, Beatryce. This is the only one I know of and have ever seen.”

  “Why are there no such books?” she asked him.

  “They are not allowed.”

  “Why are they not allowed?”

  “There are many things that are not allowed, Beatryce,” he said. “That is a discussion for another time.”

  She thought, now, about the wolf.

  She thought about the
moon in the sky that watched the wolf and waited for him to believe in who he was. Were the stars watching her? And the planets? Were they waiting for her to believe in who she was?

  And who was she, in any case?

  Not a queen. That much she knew. It was not her destiny to rule.

  What, then, was her destiny?

  Beatryce thought of the girl who saw the wolf for who he was.

  She thought about the wonder of being known by others for who you were—beloved.

  She wanted, suddenly, to say to this person who had taken her, who had wrapped her in a stinking cloth and put her on the back of a horse, that she was beloved. And that those who loved her—a wild-eyed monk, a man who had once been king, a boy who knew his letters, a goat with a head as hard as stone—would come searching for her.

  Thinking of Answelica’s head and the damage it was capable of inflicting cheered Beatryce considerably.

  The goat was capable of anything.

  The goat would find her somehow.

  They would all find her—Brother Edik and Jack Dory and Cannoc.

  What is it to know that people will come searching for you?

  Everything.

  We shall all, in the end, be led to where we belong.

  We shall all, in the end, find our way home.

  She was right.

  They came looking for her.

  They left at dawn, Jack Dory holding the sword.

  He had wanted to leave in the middle of the night, but Cannoc had said to him, “If you are going to carry that thing with you, then you must have the knowledge of how to use it.”

  “Aye,” said Jack Dory. “And who will teach me?”

  “I will,” said Cannoc, “this very night. I was once a warrior and carried a sword. I have put down my arms and armor, but I can instruct you.”

  It would be good if it could be said that Jack Dory struggled to learn what Cannoc taught him.

  Alas, that is not the case at all.

  Jack Dory did not struggle.

  Swordplay came as easily to him as everything else did.

  Cannoc showed him and he learned, and the sword, with its terrible history, was not heavy in Jack Dory’s hands. He found that if he moved it just as Cannoc said he must—fast and furious and certain and without regret—the sword made a high whistling as it went through the air, almost as if it were singing.